


Hors D'œurve

by SeymoreSinn



Series: Season One [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types, Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Cannibalism, Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, Like a lot of cannibalism, graphic description of cooking, show rewrite, with people
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 13:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15730032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeymoreSinn/pseuds/SeymoreSinn
Summary: We are finally going forward





	Hors D'œurve

“I know not all that may be coming,

but, be it what it will —

I’ll go to it laughing”

  
From “Moby Dick" by Herman Melville

 

*     *     *

**Act One**

 

*     *     *

 

**Minnesota, near Duluth**

  
Getting the stag's head had been the work of minutes.

   
Careful, planned, watchful minutes. But quick, nonetheless.

  
Finding the girl had taken rather longer, but not so long as she might have feared. 

  
It had been on a train platform. Perhaps this cannibal-killer had a good idea; hunting on trains. Though, Dr. Lecter herself was seldom so deliberate in her choice, using a physical description as the primary criteria. Nor was she so quick to take them, plucking them like fruit — ripe for the picking.

  
But needs must and all that.

  
The girl was smoking on the platform, in flat defiance of the “No Smoking” signs posted at intervals all along the wall.

  
Mischa watched her out of the corner of her eye. She had been observing at some length from a distance, considering. The girl was a good physical candidate with a long, sleek fall of dark hair, catching reddish under the harsh halogen lights. She was within a reasonable margin of error for height, age and build, for this unknown man’s obvious standards.  
Of course, one did have to have standards. This sensitive eater of coeds might be content to select his victims by looks alone, Dr. Lecter was not. She felt a very intense need, just then, to satisfy her own personal orthodoxy.

  
So she walked to the girl in a quick, officious manner. The girl ignored her approach, remaining arrogantly propped against the wall, smoke trailing up into the open sky. “Excuse me, but the signs say there is no smoking allowed here.” Mischa kept her speech, fast, nervous. Aping the querulous tone of a middle-aged, middle-class lady asking to speak to the manager.

  
The girl blinked, slow and insolent. She tipped her chin up and brought the cigarette to her lips and drew a long, slow drag. Then, with great deliberation, blew a stream of fragrant smoke right into Dr. Lecter’s face.

 

*     *     *

 

**Quantico, Virginia and beyond…**

  
It started with a phone call.

  
Will was at her desk, grading. She knew that she should also probably eat something, but everything tasted...weird. The thick fug of food smells in the cafeteria had twisted her guts, making her stomach feel like it was swinging in a greasy bag.

  
So it was coffee and Bluebooks for lunch, garnished with Jack's ringtone.

  
Jack’s ringtone. Summoning her out to the hinterlands of goddamn Minnesota.

  
Then she'd had to call in a fucking professional pet-sitting service for a million damn dollars a day because her regular sitter was booked. So by the time she was buying aspirin and earplugs at the airport while waiting to fly out, she was already in a fantastic mood. 

  
Then she didn't sleep on the plane. Not for lack of trying...but she just couldn't. She felt jittery, like her nerves where jumping. She couldn't not hear the droning engines or the breathing of the other passengers.

  
So she tried to write lesson plans instead. Lessons that turned into rambling theories. Notes mapping onto ideas about this cannibal killer. Both plans and theories that had come to nothing by the time she’d had to stow her things for the final decent into St. Cloud. She was exhausted and sore, riding a fine line between nausea and hunger. The perfect time to go see a crime scene.

  
Jack didn't seem to care about her mental state one way or another — as long as she *looked.* As long as she *saw*…whatever it was he thought was there to be seen.

  
To be fair to Jack, the scene was indeed...something.

  
They were roughly halfway between the airport and Duluth. Zeller was bouncing around, shooing ravens away from the trophy head of what must've been a truly magnificent 7-point buck that sat in the middle of a bare stumbled field. A girl rested, sprawled in display, on the rack. She was nude, pierced and split from breastbone to navel. Her ribs had been wrenched open, Beverly said, to remove the lungs. Then they're been carefully closed — like a set of French doors — and the diaphragm set neatly back in place.

Will and Jack stood shoulder to shoulder with the sun in their eyes. "I feel like I'm dreaming." She said. Her recent teeth-on-edge agitation made everything seem fuzzy and unreal.

Jack nodded, distracted. "The head was reported stolen last night. House about a mile from here."

  
Will swallowed against the tacky lump in her throat. "Just the head?"

  
Jack looked at her sideways. "The victim has been identified as Cassie Boyle. She was reported missing on Saturday morning. Last seen alive on Friday afternoon." He refocused on Jimmy Price, taking some up-close shots of the raw edges of the mounted girl's flesh. Brian Zeller chased away some more ravens that threatened to settle on the body. Beverly Katz was packing swabs.

  
"Minneapolis Homicide has already released a statement.” Zeller called to them. “They're calling him 'The Minnesota Shrike.'"

  
Will frowned. "Like the bird?"

  
"A shrike is a type of passerine bird — a perching bird — they eat mice and lizards and things, but lack sharp beaks and talons. So they impale their prey on branches. It keeps the meat and organs safe too. Like a little birdy pantry that can come back to later and feed at its leisure." Price explained in the happy way of a hard-core bird-watcher. Far more detailed and cheerful than the situation warranted. 

  
"Sounds about right." Beverly managed to keep a neutral tone, even if she couldn't quite repress a moue of distaste.

  
“I can't tell if this is sloppy or shrewd." Jack added, rubbing his chin as he continued to survey the scene.

  
Will tipped her face up into the sun, feeling the warmth on her skin against the Minnesota chill. She let her mind wander, feeling each detail and weighing it against the rest. "He wanted her to be found like this." She said at length.  "This is the homicide equivalent of...of...smearing the walls with shit. It's almost...petulant." Jack was watching her, and by the time the sibilant slid through her teeth -- Beverly and Jimmy and Brian were watching too. "It feels like he's mocking her or -" she paused, juggling the pieces of the puzzle in her imagination. "He's mocking us."

  
Brian seemed to hesitate before speaking up. "We need to run histology to make sure, but judging from the amount of blood...it looks like he took her lungs while she was still alive."

  
Jack just continued looking at the...tableau, before him. "Where did all his love go?" He asked nobody in particular.

  
Will looked at Jack and shook her head. "Whoever tucked Elise Nicholes into bed didn't do this. Our cannibal *loves* women. He wants to consume them to - to keep some part of them inside himself forever." She's talking faster now, thoughts gaining momentum as the pieces seem to fall together, giving structure to the whole. "This killer thought this woman was no better than a pig. And whoever killed Elise had a private place to do it. An isolated cabin with an antler room or something, he doesn't need to do it in the open. He has no interest in this-this...field Kabuki!”

  
Jack looked nonplused. "You think this is a copy cat?”

  
Will shook her head, trying to keep to her train of thought. "I don't know, maybe. But our cannibal he-he..." Will looked at Jack as everything finally came together. "He has a daughter. She's an only child and she's leaving home." Will looked over at the woman on the stag's head, at the auburn-dark fall if her hair. "She'll look just like the victims. The same hair and eye color, similar height and build, approximately the same age. He can't stand the thought of losing her. She's his Golden Ticket." Then Will turned on her heel, desperate to get away from the smell of death and back to the rental car with her notebooks and laptop, ready to work.

  
Jack's voice halted her. "What about the copy cat?" He called, gesturing to the stag's head. Tilted proudly back, the girl's pale skin gilded by the morning sun.

  
Will looked back, and shrugged. "An intelligent psychopath." She said, her voice flatly impatient.  "He's a sadist. Difficult, maybe impossible to track because he'll have no motive or pattern and will probably never kill this way again." She turned away and walked a little further, but paused at the tape barrier.

She called back to Jack, over her shoulder. "Why don't you have Dr. Lecter write up a profile for you? You seemed pretty impressed with her opinions." She knew she probably shouldn't needle Jack, but it *did* feel good to get a little of her own back.

 

*     *     *

**Baltimore, Maryland**

  
The rhythms of the kitchen are soothing and infinite, predictably experimental, they flow with an easy familiarity that left Dr. Lecter refreshed and untroubled.

  
She was not in the habit of partaking in smokers. In fact she had not originally meant to save this particular meat for herself. However the lungs, once exposed, were still glistening deep-pink and healthy. Perhaps this young woman’s habit was of recent origin. So…in a fit of whimsy she’d brought them home, to try her hand at meat “pre-smoked.”

  
Mischa lay the freshly soaked and salted lungs out on the counter, and placed her hands one over the other at the bottom-most point of the lobe. Then pushed up on her toes. She rolled her weight forward on her hands, palm to finger tips. Pressing residual air and fluid up through the trachea and out again. The motions are demanding - hard on the wrists and slower than a mallet. The results, however, are so much better. The meat more evenly dried and tenderized, neither bruised nor soggily-flaccid, that she felt the effort well worth it.

  
She has long thought that only the things you work for are worth keeping in the end.

  
Once cleared of residual water she trimmed away the inedible cartilage and removed a few small remaining traces of tobacco tar, then cut them into dainty bites.

  
She seared the pieces off in batches, carefully controlling the heat to build her fond. She deglazed the pan with brandy and veal stock once the alcohol had had its time to burn. Then came a fine dice of onion and bloody-ripe tomato, a single crushed clove of garlic, salt. Then she considered seasoning while the sauce bubbled.

  
The sweet dryness of thyme? No — oregano, similar but with greater assertiveness, and perhaps a judicious pinch of some sweet spice? Cassia or maybe clove, to highlight the remaining breath of smoke. Then, at the last, a little hot Aleppo pepper for a final note of bright heat.

  
The sauce seasoned, she put the meat back to braise its way to sticky perfection, then went to select her wine. She smirked a little to herself as she decants the bottle down to breathe.

If nothing else came of her little game, at least Agent Graham would have been the cause of a truly lovely meal.

**Author's Note:**

> Here we are to vomit forth a long-delayed update like a beast from the ooze.


End file.
